The association between exposure to extremely low frequency-magnetic fields (ELF-MF) and adverse health effects, including several cancers such as brain, leukemia and breast cancer has been widely discussed. There have been no consistent specific operations or agents known to cause the compensated occupational diseases (unpublished results, submitted). There have been many semiconductor workers with chronic diseases, including cancer and rare diseases, who registered with a government compensation program. In South Korea, a total of 18 former semiconductor workers who were involved in several different fabrications (hereafter fab) or chip assembly operations at two large companies have been compensated for occupational diseases as of July 2017 (leukemia = 4, aplastic anemia = 3, brain cancer = 2, breast cancer = 2, lung cancer = 2, malignant lymphoma = 2, polyneuropathy = 1, multiple sclerosis = 1, ovarian cancer = 1). In conclusion, ELF-MF exposure among workers can be substantially affected by the type of operation and job, and the activity or location. The groups with the highest quartile ELF-MF exposure level are operators in diffusion, ion implantation, module and testing operations, and maintenance engineers in diffusion, module and testing operations. The ELF-MF exposures of process operators were found to be higher than those of maintenance engineers, although peak exposure and/or patterns varied. Workers engaged in the diffusion and chip testing activities showed the highest ELF-MF exposure. Exposure to ELF-MF differed among types of factory, operation, job and activity. The average levels of ELF-MF exposure were 0.56 µT for fab workers, 0.59 µT for chip packaging workers and 0.89 µT for electrical engineers, respectively. ELF-MF exposure of workers were classified based on the quartiles of ELF-MF distribution. All measurements were categorized by operation, job and working activity during working time.
#HDADVANCE 3.0 ELF PORTABLE#
A portable device was used to monitor ELF-MF in high temporal resolution.
#HDADVANCE 3.0 ELF FULL#
These were demonstrated by assessing the exposure of 117 workers involved in wafer fabrication (fab) and chip packaging wearing personal dosimeters for a full shift.
We assessed the exposure of semiconductor workers to extremely low frequency-magnetic fields (ELF-MF) and identified job characteristics affecting ELF-MF exposure.
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